The Hughes Springs plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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Hughes Springs’s center stands about 390 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 320 ft to 540 ft, a difference of 220 ft: rolling country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Brown Mountain, about 590 ft, 14 miles southwest.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Queen City Sand (siltstone, sandstone), from the Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old.
The section below crosses 4 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 49×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Siltstone, sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 15 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Middle Eocene, 38 to 48 million years old. About 6 mi of the line.
Fine-detrital, coarse-detrital. Age: Holocene, less than 12,000 years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Eocene, 34 to 56 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Hughes Springs reaches the Gulf of America by way of Hughes Creek, Black Cypress Creek, Black Cypress Bayou, Big Cypress Bayou, Twelvemile Bayou, Cross Bayou, the Red River, the Atchafalaya and the Lower Atchafalaya: about 500 river miles.
Lake on the way: Clear Lake.
260 miles of the trip are on the Red River.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Hughes Springs; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
